“Kill kill kill kill kill the poor…”

There’s an old Mark Twain saying: “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”

The same might be said for the citizens of California regarding their weight.

For a state that boasts mostly year-long sunshine, we sure don’t seem to be utilizing it in the exercise department. According to this AP story, more than half of our state’s adults are overweight or obese. And therefore we have no advantage over those poor souls in states that suffer from the afflictions known as “winter” and “snow you can’t drive an hour downhill to get away from.”

You can download the report in PDF format. Of course everything is couched in economics, because nothing is important unless money is involved somehow: “The Economic Costs of Physical Inactivity, Obesity, and Overweight in California Adults: Health Care, Workers’ Compensation, and Lost Productivity.” Love that title, don’t you? Yeah, never mind about quality of life or, hell, living in general: how much money is this going to cost business?

Leave that aside, as it’s the focus of this report. Inside, however, is this important bullet point (page 9) in the Limitations and Precautions section:

The prevalence rates of physical inactivity, overweight, and obesity were averages of the entire California population; rates are known to be higher in certain ethnic, low-income, and lower education groups….

This is certain to be an area that society is going to need to address in the near future. And it’s a way more complicated, deeper issue than a bullet point can cover.

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Rates for Hispanic and African-American adults over 25 with less than a high school education are even higher and exceed 60 percent, said the study, which was prepared for the California Department of Health Services.